Chapter 95: 'It’s up to you!

Jules, July 6, 914, early morning.

Wang Zhong rolled out of his makeshift camp bed and saw Yegorov sitting on the bed beside him, polishing his boots.

Yegorov: “How did you make it back to the front command last night? We all thought you’d find a vehicle to spend the night in.”

Wang Zhong: “It wasn’t convenient for her.”

“How could she possibly come looking for you when it wasn’t convenient?” Yegorov countered, “No, no, she came to sleep with you. That Natalia, too, don’t believe me? Let B4 fire a shell and as soon as the boom echoes, you’ll see another Alyosha scrambling out of some corner with his pants in his hands.”

Wang Zhong was amazed. Are Westerners really so open about these things?

Yegorov waited a few seconds but got no reply, so he looked up at Wang Zhong and asked again, “So what really happened? Why didn’t you make the lady’s wish come true?”

Wang Zhong could only tell the truth.

Yegorov was shocked, his polishing hand paused: “If the war drags on for three to five years, does that mean you’ll go without touching a woman for that long? What if you get frustrated? Oh, I see, you’re talking about seeing a prostitute, right?”

Wang Zhong had to laugh; how did the conversation end up here?

“That shows my ambition!” He wanted to recite a few frontier verses to Yegorov, to express his own “won’t return until Loulan is conquered” heroic aspirations, but suddenly realized he couldn’t translate the poetry in his mind into Ante language.

Damn, no more showing off with poetry.

Just then, Popov got up too.

All three of them were sleeping on camp beds set up in the large room next to the front command, each bed three meters apart.

Popov looked at Wang Zhong with suspicion: “Aleksei Konstantinovich, this doesn’t sound like something you’d do. Although I’ve indeed heard that you haven’t been messing around with Ludmila Vasilyevna, you’re famous for not being able to control yourself.”

As he spoke, Popov glanced at Wang Zhong’s crotch: “Could it be... that you’re injured?”

Wang Zhong: “Is that something a bishop should say?”

Popov: “I’m from the Secular faction, remember?”

That secular, huh? I think you’re more of the high-speed faction! You go fast!

Wang Zhong decided not to linger on the issue. If he did, Popov might start to think he was possessed—though in reality, he was.

Looking at Yegorov, he said, “I think the enemy will definitely try to remove mines today. They’re going to use smoke to obscure our line of sight and cover the demining.”

“Definitely,” Yegorov replied as he spread new polish onto the boots and then carefully smeared it with the shining cloth, evening it out on the surface, “I heard before the war that the Prussians liked to use smoke. I didn’t expect they’d be such fans of it.”

Whenever the Prussians attacked, there was smoke everywhere, their usage of it was sublime.

Yegorov continued: “In comparison, we’ve neglected the use of smoke. The front-line infantry doesn’t even have Smoke Bombs, we have to capture them from the Prussians.”

Wang Zhong: “There’s so much we need to capture from the Prussians, like field telephones! Why are there so few radios?”

“Because the marshals still prefer using couriers,” shrugged Yegorov.

Wang Zhong shook his head and stood up to stretch his aching body caused by the too-hard camp bed. Unfortunately, he carelessly pulled at a wound on his shoulder, grimacing in pain.

It’d been nearly two weeks. Why hadn’t a simple gunshot wound healed yet?

Yegorov didn’t care whether Wang Zhong was in pain or not; he asked, “Aren’t you going to polish your boots? Don’t you want to?”

Wang Zhong thought, Is it that I don’t want to polish them? I don’t know how! I’ve hardly ever seen anyone polish boots in my life. How am I supposed to polish them when I’ve never even seen a “pig run”!

All he could do was change the subject: “Today, we need to figure out a way to prevent the enemy from demining in the smoke. Any ideas?”

Yegorov looked at Wang Zhong: “You are the White Horse General, and I’m just an ordinary regimental commander, as ordinary as they come. You should be the one to tell me what to do!”

Wang Zhong: “Let’s exercise some military democracy! Crowdsource some strategy, you know?”

Yegorov: “Then you should go ask that eccentric Vasily, he might have some outlandish ideas. Isn’t that why you value him?”

But he didn’t say it directly; instead, he encouraged Vasily: “Why do you think that is?”

“I think they are intentionally leaking false information. The Prussians are very methodical and wouldn’t suddenly change this much. There must be someone ordering them to change their practice.”

Wang Zhong: “You’re right, I have the same feeling.”

At that moment, Dimitri entered the operations center and saluted Wang Zhong.

Wang Zhong: “Dimitri, don’t take over the artillery sight for now. Let me ask you, what’s the trajectory difference between the 76mm gun’s shrapnel and armor-piercing shells? How can we adjust it so that the shrapnel shells land in approximately the same area, based on the armor-piercing shell data that we’ve already determined?”

Dimitri: “That depends on how far away the target is. Do you want the trajectory to end on the ground, detonating the shrapnel shells?”

“Yes, I anticipate that today the enemy will use smoke to cover their engineers laying mines. Our response is to use yesterday’s calibrated data to fire shrapnel shells to disrupt the engineers’ operations.”

“It’s simple; I’ll produce a new set of data immediately.”

At that point, the phone rang.

Wang Zhong picked up himself: “This is Rocossov, what’s happening?”

“You’d better come over to the Brigade headquarters. We’ve received orders from the Front Army command,” said Pavlov on the other end of the phone.

————

Brigade Command.

“Your unit is to hold its current position until 8 pm on July 11th to allow the Front Army to form a new defensive line.” After reading the orders, Wang Zhong looked up at Pavlov, “So the Front Army has finally realized that Bogdanovka has been lost?”

Pavlov shook his head: “Not yet, we’ve received many telegrams from Bogdanovka. But the 23rd Armored Division tasked with the breakout has already been destroyed. What’s left of them is said to have retreated to our north at Dolgy.”

Pavlov tapped on the map where there was a marker for an armored force.

Wang Zhong: “Was the map updated this morning?”

“Yes. The Front Army intelligence department believes the force opposite us is part of the 15th Armored Division, with some auxiliary forces added. They think we can hold perfectly with our fortifications.”

Wang Zhong frowned: “The enemy’s armored division has at least fifteen thousand men. Including our defensive battalion and the reconstituted 5th Bieshensk Battalion, we have just over two thousand men, and we are extremely short of technical equipment with only three anti-tank cannons! The enemy could have hundreds of tanks!”

Pavlov looked distressed: “The Front Army insists we only have a part of the 15th Armored opposite us.”

Wang Zhong was just about to curse when explosions sounded outside.

However, the sound was faint, like distant thunder.

Wang Zhong: “What’s that? Is another area being shelled?”

Grigori rushed into the Brigade headquarters: “It’s mortars, sounds like the 120mm heavy mortars.”

Wang Zhong: “That must be the divisional artillery of the 15th Armored.”

He had commanded the 15th Armored in the game “Steel Division” and was familiar with their capabilities.

He placed his hand over the phone, just waiting for the ring.

He didn’t have to wait long.

“This is Rocossov, go ahead.”

Yegorov’s voice came from the operations center on the other end of the line: “The enemy has started using smoke. They’re likely prepping for mine-laying by engineers. Before the smoke rose, the artillery sight caught one of the engineer tanks moving along the road, probably to clear mines there first—even though we have no mines on the road.”

Wang Zhong: “Open fire first, and remember to cover the front of the 76mm gun position with smoke.”

Since the firing was based on pre-set coordinates for blind firing, it made sense to cover the front of their own gun positions to prevent the enemy from spotting them.

“I’ll head back right away.”

After hanging up the phone, Wang Zhong told Pavlov: “Keep pleading poverty with the higher-ups; we definitely can’t stop an entire armored division with just these troops we have now. It’s up to you!”